The perils of perfectionism

My good friend Sue Bergin — writer, hospice chaplin, collage artist, musician and all-around deep thinker — has a new book out, Am I a Saint Yet: Healing the Pain of Perfectionism (available here). I’ll be attending her book launch Saturday, and I’ll review it here when I finally have a copy.

As soon as the Christmas noise is over, we’ll likely be inundated by the media with recommendations for New Year’s resolutions. That’s all well and good (I mean, who couldn’t stand to lose five pounds?) but I think we should temper our expectations. I say, if the resolution is the result of your comparing yourself negatively with others, rethink it. Or, better yet, drop it.

My resolutions will likely run along the lines of slowing-down-to-smell-the-roses kind of stuff.

How about you?

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Read this last month and it’s been on my mind since then. I remember being a perfectionist, especially in things where I was capable of perfection – sewing is one great example. What I can’t put my finger on is what made me determined to change. I began to behavior modify myself – for example, in my sewing, everytime I resisted tearing out a seam and making it straighter, I bought myself an expensive piece of material or a super stylish pattern that I had no plans to sew, but read like a novel. (Probably only seamstresses know what I mean by this.) The fact is that other people liked it. When my greeting card has a crooked greeting or opens up backward, they see more of me in it, and less machine. And they think that they could do just as good or even a better job, which feels good.